


Because Drinking Doesn't Always Do the Trick

by traceylane



Category: Now You See Me (2013)
Genre: M/M, clubs, daniel is oblivious as always
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-18
Updated: 2013-07-18
Packaged: 2017-12-20 14:01:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/888103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/traceylane/pseuds/traceylane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>J. Daniel Atlas is having a bad night, and since Jack's a good friend, they get halfway wasted and have half a gay escapade.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Because Drinking Doesn't Always Do the Trick

**Author's Note:**

> Woo! I've been wanting to do something for this fandom for a while, and I thought this was fun. Un-beta'ed and finished pretty late at night, so all mistakes are mine-- feel free to point them out to me if you spot any! Thanks for reading.

It was a lukewarm night in Manhattan. Like the universe knew he was sulking.

 He had gotten into a little bit of a tiff with Henley, which had started off only as snarky remarks and rolling eyes but had quickly escalated to throwing things across the room when Merritt mentioned a few of the things Danny had called her while she was out earlier that day.

What had him storming out, though, as collected as anyone could ever storm out of a room, was Merritt’s implication of how many fucks Atlas _actually_ gave about Henley bringing guys back to their place. Or maybe just about Henley. Either way, contrary to what Danny said, it wasn’t “none”.

Thankfully Jack had gone off to some bar or whatever—funny since Danny could’ve sworn Jack had been twelve yesterday—otherwise it would’ve resulted in an intense competition to get him to side with one of them, provoked most likely by Henley, who was never satisfied with just a fraction of the room knowing she was right. Danny imagined it involving bloodshed at worst and intense discomfort for Jack at best.

Not that he really thought much about Jack’s discomfort.

It’s on a whim that Danny went to go find Jack at Wherever He Was, logic saying going home alone would leave him not only without support, but also looking more pathetic than when he had left.

It’s a big city, and Atlas would have been screwed trying to find Jack if not for his tremendous brain capacity; even something as irrelevant, until now, as Jack’s location had not yet slipped his mind.

\--

He finds him sitting at the bar of a club proclaimed _Red Tops_ by a glaring blue-purple neon sign above the entrance—it was so tragically _not_ ironic, and Danny makes a note to say something snide about Jack’s taste later on.

He’s staring off with that usual blank look on his face, his face pressed into his hand, exposing a bit of his suspiciously white teeth. He hadn’t quite mastered Atlas’s signature expression, a mixture of quiet condescension, pensive detachment, and intense boredom.

Strangely it was the second thing Danny observed that the bar was filled to the brim—absolutely no pun intended—with homosexuals, and something clicks as he remembers that thing Henley mentioned about Jack on the plane to Chicago. Sure, ok, he supposed that made sense, but damn, he really needed to brush up on this psychological analysis thing.

It’s a vaguely erotic, wildly vibrant, unevenly lit alternate universe. Which made it not really any different from any other club, so Danny, never a fan of the club scene, treads lightly.

Nonetheless he takes the seat next to Jack who only seems to notice he's there when Atlas raps his knuckles on the counter and orders something dry.

“Oh hey, man. You get kicked out or something?”

Jack looks at him sideways, irritatingly smug, and Danny can’t help that his eyes narrowed just a tiny bit, but he succeeds in ignoring the question.

“So what about this place appeals to you? Is it the gratuitous use of violet? The decorative peach daiquiri stains? What, do they not card here?”

“I’m twenty-seven.”

Impossible.

 “My birthday was two and a half weeks ago.”

Danny shrugs and takes a sip of his drink when it comes, remembering nothing special about that particular time. Otherwise he just hadn’t cared—which now that he thought about it, sounded very much an asshole move, even for Danny. But then again, every day was a party for the Four Horsemen.

“Well if it isn’t that, it certainly can’t be the music, either, or the drinks for that matter,” he frowns into his glass.  

“Or were you just hoping to get lucky?” Jack snorts. Sometimes it annoyed Danny that Jack took his jabs as jokes, but he’s happy for it now, because he’s not up for another argument. “Because if you are, the card tricks usually work. I could help, too. Wouldn’t mind playing wingman—”

“Shut up, Danny,” and Jack’s laughing outright now—oddly it was a bit of a relief for the both of them. They order another round—Danny actually grows just a bit more complacent the more they drink—and Jack nudges the Henley Situation out of Atlas.

“Why don’t you just say sorry?”

Obviously Danny had only given him the most recent bit, not the whole story. “Unfortunately, that’s not part of my policy. Good try, though.”

“So what are you going to do when we get home?”

“I’m guessing we’ll get back late enough so that she’s either sleeping or too tired to care. Then tomorrow we’ll find something new to argue about, hopefully on a smaller scale.”

It wasn’t running, Atlas thinks to himself, but Jack is good enough at running to know it when he saw it.

Jack Wilder isn’t above poking fun, but he chooses not to go any further with the current subject. Danny always gets meaner, sharper—and a bit pitiful—when it came to Henley, and Jack has enough respect for him not to press those buttons.

“… Did you say something?”

The two of them had gotten lost in their own thoughts, but it appeared that Jack’s had become audible.

“Do you… do you want to dance?”

Danny’s reaction makes it apparent that he hears Jack the second time around. However he has no idea why he _did_ say it a second time, but there was no way to take it back now, though perhaps he could save face.

“I mean, considering where we are, where _you_ are, and, you know, the chances of it happening ever again.”

He was right, of course, Atlas thought, and though he had never expressed too much of an interest in delving deeper into whoever Jack was besides a good performer and a key to every door in the galaxy, he had chosen to step into this realm—Jack’s realm, Jesus _Christ_ —and hell if he wasn’t going to enjoy it, at least for one night.  

“Fine. Yeah, okay.”

And Jack slaps a bill onto the counter and pulls him onto the dance floor.

The closer they came to the crowd, the mob of sweaty, too hot strangers that would probably not even notice if they touched Danny somewhere he certainly did not want to be touched, the closer Danny came to having some kind of panic attack and bolting the fuck out of there, but Jack’s hand was warm and loose around his wrist and it distracted him, for better or for worse.

They’re in the section of people in between the center of the chaos and the more lax outer layer of people who enjoyed the feeling of air in their lungs when Danny realizes where he is. He stiffens and focuses on Jack, who slows to a mildly energetic bounce to ask him what was wrong.

“Everything.”

And Jack puts on the most sympathetic face Danny has ever seen him wear, and it pisses him off, but then his wrists are grabbed again, “Come on, Danny, relax,” and Jack throws their hands up together, but the rest of Danny stays still, like he’s a puppet with all but two strings cut.

 “What the hell are you doing?”

“See, when you’re in places like this, you really do _disappear_ , you know? And it just feels good.” And he grins, because _get it, Danny, get it?_ Atlas raises his eyebrows and puts on a smile he knows Jack knows is fake. Danny makes another note to have a talk with Jack about subtlety.

“Uh-huh,” Danny says, but it’s kind of quiet so Jack has put himself very much into Danny’s personal space just to hear him, but in the past few minutes Danny’s learned that apparently everyone in the building did not know a thing about personal space.

“You’re not relaxing,” Jack yells over the music, and he sounds almost worried.

“Yeah, whatev—”

And then Jack leans forward and plants a kiss on Danny’s mouth.  

After a year or two, probably, after Jack moves his lips down Danny’s neck, sucks at the skin on his collarbone, Danny murmurs, “I’m dreaming, this is a nightmare.” He’s unsure if he wasn’t moving because of the shock or because he was too above all of this nonsense even to react. He would have preferred to think the latter, but it was at least a bit of both.

“It feels like that, doesn’t it? You being a magician in a gay club, and all.”And he laughs like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard.

 _You’re one too, you idiot_ , is what Danny thinks before processing that Jack is smirking on top of his lips again, pulling him in so their chests touched. He moves up his jaw to that spot behind his ear, clutching handfuls of that crisp white shirt, and Danny shivers because he just can’t help it.

“This isn’t relaxing,” he hisses, but he doesn’t pull away, because it’s true, he feels agitated and there’s blood rushing to his head so fast he shouldn’t be conscious and shit, Jack wants to leave a mark there, and there simply isn’t enough oxygen in the world to help his brain make sense of how ridiculous, how fucking deranged it all is. This isn’t how he was supposed to work, this wasn’t how the _universe_ was supposed to work.

“I know, sorry,” Jack says, his lips pulling off skin with a slick noise. He looks at Danny matter-of-factly, “but maybe you could just go with it; it might make you feel better. Take your mind off of things.”

Then he shrugs, and it’s so obnoxiously cool of him, like he was offering Danny the last slice of pizza or a ride home from their fucking high school soccer game.

But this is better than those things, or anything that Danny can think of at the moment, because Jack “Just Go With It” Wilder is actually very good at this, so he sighs, exasperated, before shoving his hands into Jack’s hair and letting him hum happily into Danny’s mouth.

It’s when Jack starts to roll his hips against him that Danny almost passes out, and he says so, muttering into Jack’s neck. His breathing’s become erratic and he’s flustered and way, way too hot.

It’s a bit insulting that Jack pulls away so easily, but he’s flushed, too, and apologetic. “Sorry, too much?” he yells over the music.

“A little,” Danny shouts back, just a tad annoyed, because this is usually something he wants to deal with privately, and in the shower, and with his hand, not on the dance floor of a club with a stupid name in pants he hadn’t known were so tight until right this minute.

“Do you want to go home and show Henley your hickey?” Jack asks loudly, and Danny hits him on the shoulder.

“Then maybe I can help you with that, you know, if you want,” he says, motioning to Danny’s dick with the hand that’s not rubbing his injured shoulder, and Danny hits him again, harder, but doesn’t say anything because Jack is only half-kidding.

And they wrestle their way to the exit and when they step outside, just for a few seconds, it’s like every light in the world has shut off. Then the streetlamps come back into focus, and Danny’s mind is exhausted but Jack says, “Race you,” and they run home. Jack hops fences and Danny uses every shortcut he knows, the city’s layout tucked away in his brain.

\--

“Where have you been?” Henley asks, her feet up on the coffee table, and she doesn’t look vaguely interested until she sees Danny’s hair—so messy it was _unnatural_ —and the mark on the bottom of his neck that he’s not showing off, but not trying to cover up, either.

“You’re still awake?” Atlas shoots back, like he’s accusing her of something, but before she can answer he says something about needing a cold shower and climbs up the stairs. “Danny’s upset because we made out,” Jack drawls, and Henley flinches, her eyebrows raised.

“Good for him,” Merritt says genuinely behind his copy of GQ, like Danny’s just graduated, or installed solar panels.

And they see Danny’s head peek out of the stairwell with a towel wrapped around his neck. “First of all, I’m not upset. I was perfectly fine with it. Second of all, it was your fault in the first place.” He doesn’t specify if he means Henley or Jack, because he likes it when they have to guess. “Good night.”

Then they hear him trudge back up the stairs and turn on the shower.

After a bit of an awkward silence, Merritt peeks over his magazine, “He didn’t _look_ perfectly fine,” and the other two laugh a little at that.  

Then Jack looks at Henley and shrugs, rocking on his heels. “Well, _I_ think he’s sorry.”

And she likes Jack, likes to think she gets Jack, but tonight his crooked smile—among other things—leaves her baffled. 

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry this didn't have more sexy times, but I'm thinking of making this part of a series, not a chaptered fic, because I want to think more about the bits and pieces of this relationship, since this was kind of a bro!fic, wasn't it? Anyway, I hope you liked it. Feel free to comment or drop me a line, and thanks again for reading.


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